11 Reader Responses

1. channel null Says:
   September 21st, 2005 at 1:30 pm

   Nothing glamorous, but here goes. The only times I’ve OOBE’d have been accidentally, catapulted out of sleep. Also, it helps to have been taking massive amounts of DXM; the high-dose DXM experience itself more resembles dissociation and discarnation, but it has an amplifying effect on meditation and dreaming for about a month afterwards.

   I’d categorize two types of OOBE, one is a gentle exit, with the body more detailed, and more resembling a dream–i.e., I don’t think I was genuinely remote viewing, but just projected into imagination. Color seems less pronounced with these. The second type, which I’ve reached upon becoming totally conscious of and then leaving the dream and only pulled off twice, feels far more like a projection into real space–i.e., I feel like I could have spied on my neighbors, and is accompanied by a crashing-ripping-tearing exit, which seems to be in a different body; my arms were translucent purple, and in niether case could I get to a mirror before I got too frightened and had to quit. Joel Birrocco in Kaos14 also talks about this distinction in OOBE, so I’m not alone.

   The sensation of fear was, quite literally physically; my thought processes were normal, but when I came too, my pulse was high, at least 100 bpm.

   I’ve recently had success upon waking and sleeping with opening my “astral vision”, having been doing a lot of exercise “astrally”, i.e., in imagination. One phenomenon, though, is the low signal-to-noise ratio, I see a lot of things that are false, i.e., can’t read a clock, a phone out of place, etc.

2. alistair Says:
   September 21st, 2005 at 2:09 pm

   my first experience was as a child of two or three flying out over my dad`s head, yelling for his attention and finally sailing out the bathroom window at the end of the hall and into the lane between the houses. i could see the details of the iron drain pipe and the brick work on the second story of the otside wall of our house. i told my parents about it and was assured it was just a dream.
   as an adult i have had many experiences of ludid dreams of flying that were highly detailed. details of the roofs of houses and upstairs windows were sharp and clear and consistant with waking images of the same structures. i have never felt the need to actually practice the process but i`m quite sure that it`s a skill that is aquirable.
   i had one exprerience of rising out of my body by twisting into a green light and rising up sharply, but i wasn`t able to keep focus on the expreience and i went back to sleep.

3. Ant Says:
   September 21st, 2005 at 2:27 pm

   When I was in highschool during my lucid dreaming excursions I did some research on OBE’s and read about a few techniques which I later tried. I couldn’t seem to make the one work where you’re supposed to be able to exit the dream and have a real OBE. I always just imagined it instead and did some crazy dream stuff.

   I think maybe I got it to work another time though with a different technique. Of course, I can’t really verify, because I really have no idea what it’s supposed to be like. I woke up in the middle of the night and decided to use the one technique that works (i think) in relation to the hypnogogic (or is it hypnopompic?) state where you latch onto the feeling of falling asleep as a sense of opportunity. Anyway, the point is, you’re supposed to close your eyes and imagine yourself rocking back and forth in your bed. Well, I did this and I realized it was actually working. I started to get a little freaked out because the rocking seemed to be making me actually launch out further towards the center of the room which didn’t really seem possible.

   And then suddenly there was this really loud POP, but it was also a sensation. It sounded a lot like the sound a lightbulb makes when it breaks or explodes. I got really comfortable and the rocking also stopped. I felt like I was floating and my thoughts became incredibly clear as if I didn’t have anything but “consciousness.” I also seem to remember not being able to really see at first, but everything gradually began to get lighter (like a slow fade from black to white). I started feeling a sense of fear that maybe I succeeded and I started imagining that spirits and things could be hanging out nearby and that now I was rather … vulnerable? It was around that time that I heard a weird noise that seemed to be getting louder and louder. It was like someone was breathing really loud. I got anxious and it got louder and faster. It was me, breathing, and it allowed me to locate myself in the room, and I had apparently moved my ‘consciousness’ near my nightstand and quite possibly inside of it. Well, that freaked me out, and so as soon as I started to really panic, I “snapped” like a rubber band back into myself and opened my eyes, regathering my breathing and sitting there wishing I hadn’t been so freaked out by the experience.

   My dad’s also had an OBE (actually, more like a Near-Death Experience) when he fell off a ladder, went unconscious, and broke his arm back in the 70s or 80s.

4. rev max Says:
   September 21st, 2005 at 3:45 pm

   nd then suddenly there was this really loud POP, but it was also a sensation. It sounded a lot like the sound a lightbulb makes when it breaks or explodes. I got really comfortable and the rocking also stopped. I felt like I was floating and my thoughts became incredibly clear as if I didn’t have anything but “consciousness.” I also seem to remember not being able to really see at first, but everything gradually began to get lighter (like a slow fade from black to white).

   I’ve started seeing flashes of light and hearing explosions as I fall asleep lately

   3 times last 3 weeks - never happened before in my life

   all 3 times i had dreams that i was wandering around my own house at night and either hanging out by myself in the dark or else interacting with the spirits i share my space with

   well, now i know for sure what this is. fell described these phenomena as signs of opening the astral travel door in a post a week ago or so too.

5. hebrides Says:
   September 21st, 2005 at 6:07 pm

   In high school I once found myself floating softly and gently above my bed toward the ceiling in the middle of the night. Right before I would have “hit” the spackle (if it were my physical body), I woke up. It really did feel like I was actually floating.

   The other three times happened over a period of a few months in 2003 when I was living in Queens. They all happened as I drifted to sleep, a little too late for my good. actually, drift isn’t the right word. I was trying to go to sleep, very very tired. And I felt a sort of electric energy start to build up and a pressure in the back of my head also begin to build and build and build. Then there was a huge sound like a circuit breaker shorting or tripping–I’m not sure “a pop” quite captures the sound for me–and then I found myself floating above my futon mattress and I started to spin around and around, but didn’t really feel in control of it. It was frightening and uncomfortable. Just really, really strange. I wish I had known how to be in control of it or what to do.

   The Radhasoamis learn how to do this after they’re initiated and I’ve heard that the Eckankar folks use the same techniques, involving chanting power names and focusing on the third eye in meditation until you hear the “Word” (which I’ve heard a few times and it’s like an increasing buzz of energy). You’re then supposed to “follow” this current of sound either to higher realms or out of your body (I think it’s actually the same thing.).

6. pat Says:
   September 21st, 2005 at 7:15 pm

   yah once when i was a really young child i had a dream that i guess could be considered a OOBE. I found myself floating in my one piece pajama suit ( i was probably 5 years old) surrounded by what seemed to me at the time to be a bubble. I floated from where i was sleeping- my parents room- into the upstrairs hall i could not guide where i was going and suddenly i found myself floating down the stairs into growing darkness of the first floor where there seemed to be demons or something that frightened me what appeared to be like a dark monster with glowing eyes and i couldnt get away or stop or even move then suddenly i woke up. I also think that I might have confused OOBE’s with sleep walking. I can swear that once I woke up in the moring went dowstairs and there was food removed from the refrigirator and my mom asked me if I had got a late night snack and for some reason I vaguely remember my dream that being me going downstairs to get food. Felt alot like dejavous.

7. channel null Says:
   September 21st, 2005 at 8:32 pm

   Those flashes of light, I’ve seen two varieties, at least; one is a very brief, violent flash. The other is a gentler flash; the brief, violent flashes are often accompanied by a sharp, dramatic hi-res vision; the gentle flashes not so much, but may involve a sort of remote-sensing in my room.

   I actually want to categorize several tiers of “OBE” or remote sensing, but need some time to think and sit down.

8. channel null Says:
   September 21st, 2005 at 8:38 pm

   I actually had a moderate amount of success using bwgen.exe–it’s available as shareware–using presets that entrained to theta waves, like “deep mind VI,” in achieving gnosis and gentle-variety OOBEs.

   Hebrides, that “word”–does it sound like an actual word? During my “violent” exits, I often hear, along with popping, an incredibly loud vibrating that sounds sonorant and like it was made by intelligence, maybe the singing of angels, if you’ll permit poetry, and just as frightening and beautiful. Once or twice I’ve heard a deep vibrating, but it more resembled the ayahuasca-alien prescence, and tried to use a rolling exit technique–but I was stuck at the head and couldn’t turn on my vision.

9. alistair Says:
   September 21st, 2005 at 10:57 pm

   i use bwgen.exe to charge up before meditation/problem solving.
   about the bubble experience, i was sitting on a carpet during my oobe.
   about the lights. i listened to shoo edwards on radiorbit last night and after practicing his energy practive for a while i could see tiny pin-prick sized coloured lights of blue, red and green briefly in my conscious field of vision. the colours were precisely the same hues and brightness as the colours that form in my meditations.

10. Gina Says:
    September 22nd, 2005 at 10:10 am

    I think its relatively common to people on a spiritual path to experience these episodes often. Brainwave gen is a good start for people wanting to experience OBE’s, who dont want or can’t do meditation. Meditation seems to work better and faster, but I’ve been thinking of modeling the BWgen settings and adding it to my meditation practice. In other words listening to the BWgen memorising some of the simpler presets and playing them back mentally, sort of like remembering what a song sounds like.

11. hebrides Says:
    September 22nd, 2005 at 1:08 pm

    Channel null, the “Word” is what the Radhasoami’s also call “Shabd”, which is they consider the divine sound current through which God created the universe. It doesn’t sound like a word at all. When I heard it it was a deep, vibration that also had an increasingly high-pitch beneath it. They actually speak of different levels of the Shabd which correspond to different realms or realities above ours and you follow the shabd through these changes to each world. They say that in one realm, the shabd sounds like a million bees buzzing, in another it can sounds like chimes (different masters of the tradition differ on the number of nuances of the sound current and the number of realms)–so we’re definitely talking about the same phenomenon.